


Professions

by atria



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-26 00:21:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16208762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atria/pseuds/atria
Summary: Takashi’s stood next to Fuji and known they were working the match over in their minds, picking out the blind spots and bad play. It’s still new to him, this feeling. He’s never had to be so close to one single person, thinking and breathing both, in the same place twice over. He has no idea what Fuji is thinking now.-Taka-centric fic about the weird and wonderful dynamics that come with befriending and learning Fuji, who is just a very precocious teenage boy after all. Inspired by the fact that (a) the most successful tennis players all seem pretty well-off even in PoT fantasyland, and (b) Kawamura doesn't even get to be part of the Seigaku chibi family (they just made him the sushi guy!!!)





	Professions

  1. Beginnings



 Takashi makes the regulars in his third and final year. The racquet slips from his hand and walking normally to the net to shake Arai’s hand feels like he’s walking on water, his legs unnaturally light and loose. 

Oishi grins and clasps his hand. Kikumaru jumps on him — though he has to reach up to ruffle Takashi’s hair — and even Tezuka has a warm look to his narrow face. Takashi has always felt closer to the knot of freshmen boys he met on the tennis club than any of his classmates or cousins; wanted to be part of them as he’d never wanted anything before. They’re his team now. He won’t let them down.

Today, he’ll take his time in the showers. He lets his clubmates trickle out, one by one, grins mutely at their claps on his shoulder in the locker room. He wants to be close to the courts by himself, too, to think about the shots he made and could have made as the water sluices down his back. Tennis doesn’t come naturally to him the way it does to Tezuka or Fuji, but today, it felt like his. He wants it to be his for a little longer.

 He goes in when the last of the stragglers have left, flips the switch and breathes quickly, then slowly as the water turns from cold to hot. “Burning,” he tells the faucet solemnly, and shudders with laughter. Then stops. Someone is speaking over the drum of water.

“I can’t believe that Kawamura made it over me,” the voice says. Arai. He must have gone out for a snack with his friends before coming back to pick up his gear. “He didn’t come close all of last year, and it’s so stupid that the ranking matches reward, like, luck and experience over talent.” 

Another voice — Yukiguchi? — replies indistinctly. “Kawamura’s a decent guy.” Words he can’t hear. “It’s so obvious he wasn’t born to do this. I mean, compare that game today to buchou’s.”

Arai snorts. “Yeah, whatever, I guess every team needs an alternate. It’s just disgusting to see Kikumaru-senpai and Oishi-senpai fawn over him like that.”

“Heh, I was hoping someone noticed too. As though they don’t know see he played before!”

Yes, that’s Yukiguchi’s voice, clearer this time. Takashi’s fingers fumble with the knob. The shower stops. He can feel his heart thump faster in his chest, tears prick his eyes. Arai and Yukiguchi must know someone’s inside, if they’re listening at all, and as he stands with the last of the water dripping on his face he fears and knows that they are right, even if in part.

Someone else makes the move for him. “Taka-san,” someone calls, clear and carrying past the shower doors.

“Ah, Taka-san, I was waiting for you.” Fuji’s opened the door, utterly unselfconscious. He’s smiling as he always is, but his eyes are wide and clear. “Want a towel?”

Takashi nods mutely and wraps himself in the rough cloth. He turns his back to Fuji to towel off and change, waiting one second, two, to get himself together. God — did Fuji hear what they said?

In the end, Fuji speaks first when he’s clothed and mostly dry. “Can I come to see your family’s shop tonight?” he says. “I waited till you made the team so I can treat.”

He’s smiling as he always is, but his eyes are wide and clear. Takashi feels the moment it sinks in: that Fuji was waiting for him to make it. That Fuji was sure enough to wait.

He feels his face heat, pleasure and embarrassment and remnant shame, and he’s smiling when they run into Arai and Yukiguchi in the changing room.

 “Oh, are you in the tennis club?” Fuji says. “Sorry, I think this room is members-only.” Arai’s eyes bug out and Yukiguchi flushes splotchy red. They stammer and apologise and scamper out of the room as though they truly hadn’t the right to be there.

 Takashi’s left in awe. He wonders if Fuji’s just being nice, or worse, if he’s being nice because he heard what Arai said about Takashi’s _luck_ today, but that’s not true. Fuji is how he always is. As though to prove the point, Fuji makes a weird remark about the shape of the stars tonight, and Takashi looks up at the white pinpricks of light blurring into mist, suddenly aware of how his eyes burn, and says yes, yes, they are quite bright. 

  1. Lessons



 Sometimes Fuji comes to the store. The door will slide open at slow hour on a Saturday afternoon, when Takashi’s practicing his slices at the counter. Lately his hands seem to grow each time he holds the knife; everything he thinks he’s learned he has to learn again.

 The first visit, he asks Fuji if he is here to play tennis. They’ve played doubles a couple of times when Takashi was off reserve, and they’re getting there, if slowly.

 “Nah, I have homework. Tennis isn’t my life,” Fuji smiles, but he also seems serious. Takashi has noticed that Fuji doesn’t like talking about tennis at all, outside of club training. “Do you mind if I study here?”

“Sure.” He wipes his hands on his apron. “Can I get you anything to eat?”

“I’m fine, thanks. Would you work with me, if you’re not busy with something else?”

“Sure.” Takashi has had trouble fitting in homework since he made the team, with extra practices and laps, hours lifting and lunging and learning about a new spin, smash, serve; learning Fuji. He’s wondered how the rest of them find time to study, if the ability to coast in school is something you’re weirdly born into, like tennis or running or books in the household. He shakes his head. That’s a step to jealousy.

He comes back downstairs with his folders, and finds Fuji has already cleared a space for him at the table. They work without talking much, and first Takashi’s tense with things he might have to say, then he relaxes. Fuji’s as comfortable in Takashi’s home as he is in the locker room or the school garden where he’s often found at a break, and if he doesn’t need to talk, Takashi doesn’t either.

 *

They do the same two weeks later, and then a week after, and then Fuji starts to follow him home once a week after school, too, when they end early enough that the store won’t be full when they arrive. At practice, their game improves in peaks and troughs, and he learns to tell when Fuji’s genuinely pleased, though he doesn’t talk about it when they meet in the little shop. He rarely brings up tennis, but he’s verbose about their teammates and their eccentricities, can spend hours silent before welling up with opinions and laughter. He really loves them, Takashi realises, loves them and loves to laugh at them in the way Takashi might love a brother or sister if he had one. Loves to share it with someone who understands, who’s learning to feel the same way, too.

Knowing these things about Fuji convinces Takashi that he is wanted on the team. But knowing more about Fuji also means there’s more he doesn’t understand. Some of it is nearly academic: How can someone have a gift like that, play a game so cleanly and swiftly that it’s art, and not love it? Takashi slices salmon, watches the soft rose of flesh part like water, and thinks he’s learning about what adults call beauty, and thinks he would love this, if he were good at this the way Fuji is at tennis. If he could make the knife one with his hand, if he could wield it without pain and come out with a bit of beauty.

Some of it rankles more. They never share a meal at Takashi’s, because Fuji never says yes when he offers, claims he’s wanted for dinner at his own home even though he must go so late sometimes that the food will be cold, or gone. It bothers Takashi to send Fuji home hungry, worse to think that Fuji might not like sushi (impossible) or, he supposes, neighbourhood sushi — their sushi.

 He wonders if Fuji’s family eats at home or in restaurants, if his mother cooks or if they have help. These are things he knows about his neighbourhood friends and cousins, but not about any of his friends at Seigaku, not even Fuji. Especially not Fuji. 

* 

On Saturday, Takashi is ready when Fuji comes. His cuts are improving, and he lays out a plate for two, salmon, tamago and wasabi rolls — larger green centers for Fuji, smaller ones for him.

“Please try some,” he says formally when Fuji walks in the door and shrugs his bag onto the stool. He’s nervous, but he makes sure to smile.

“I’m supposed to go home for dinner,” Fuji says slowly, looking at Takashi as though he’s trying to solve an equation. “But that looks delicious. I’d love to have some.”

It’d be weird to stand and watch while Fuji eats, though that’s what he does all the time when other customers are here. He comes to sit by Fuji at the bar and they eat without looking at each other much. Takashi’s stomach lurches with every bite, aware the silence is uncomfortable the way it hasn’t been for weeks, knowing this means he was right after all.

“This is so good, Taka-san,” Fuji says at last, when there’s just one roll left on the plate. By Takashi’s math, it’s Fuji’s. He has eaten quite slowly, as though reluctantly.

“Is it really, Fuji?” Takashi knows he’s frowning, but he can’t help it. “You don’t have to tell me that if you don’t like it. I’m - I know we’re not a fancy shop, and dad says I need a lot more work anyway, but - I’m trying and I want to know what you really think. So I’ll be good at this someday.”

He swallows and glances up at Fuji for the first time since he opened his mouth. Fuji isn’t smiling, and his eyes are large and dark. Is he angry?

“I really meant it, Taka-san. I loved the food and I know you work too hard. It makes me appreciate it more. Why do you think I didn’t?”

“You never eat here,” Takashi says quietly. He wants to believe Fuji, but doesn’t. He didn’t know he cared this much, either, but suddenly it matters, this world of free Sundays and child tennis lessons and English books they don’t hold in common, even when they’re shoulder to shoulder and sticking with sweat, even when he’s learning to read Fuji’s thoughts in the set of his shoulder on the forecourt. It matters more because.

“I. I didn’t want to impose,” Fuji says, and he’s visibly thinking of what to say, though it’s usually easy, as easy for him as the game he was born to play. “I thought you wouldn’t let me pay, and I felt bad.” He smiles a little but it’s tense. “Maybe I should’ve just said yes and bought you a new racquet or a whole bucket of tennis balls for your birthday.”

Takashi’s silent. Fuji probably wouldn’t think this way, if it were Tezuka or Inui or Kikumaru he followed home each week. He wouldn’t feel the need to tally his imaginary bills and buy him something nice and probably well over what he really should have paid for the rough dinners he makes with the practice knife. But fish isn’t cheap. Takashi can’t help that, and in a way, Fuji can’t help how much his family has either. It isn’t fair, that they should both feel bad about something they didn’t choose, something that’s good for Fuji and maybe less-good or different-good for Takashi, though he tries so hard not to be petty or mean. It isn’t right.

“You don’t have to. You’re a guest,” Takashi tries to explain. “I - As a kid, all my friends came to our shop.” And we could make all wasabi rolls next time you come, he doesn’t say.

Fuji surprises him. “ _Are_ we friends?”

“Of course,” Takashi says without thinking. Then he blinks. “I mean - unless -" 

Fuji’s smile is sumptuous, a full meal in itself. “Then I guess I can mooch off your sushi once in a while.”

And just like that, it doesn’t go away, but they’re able to look at each other normally at last. Takashi doesn’t understand, feels as though Fuji has done something so deftly that he didn’t quite see him move, but he doesn’t mind. For a moment, he can’t help his smile.

“Mooch” is such a Fuji word.

  1. Profession



“I think Oishi would be an engineer,” Fuji says. They’ve both finished their work except for the things they don’t like — science for Fuji and history for Takashi — and they’re playing one of Fuji’s favourite games: what will everybody be doing in ten years?

“I thought he wanted to be a doctor.”

“I think he’d make the mark for med school, but realise he hates blood. So, with his brain for science and math, he’d be an engineer.”

“But he hates technology too,” Takashi points out. He likes listening to Fuji talk about ten years as though it’s nothing, likes how it makes him think of things they might say or do together when they’ve all known one another for thirteen whole years.

“Ah, that’s where the comedy comes in. It’ll be like a short story about why parents shouldn’t force their kids to do science. Or something. 

“But Oishi should be happy in the story." 

“Fine. Animal blood doesn’t bother him, so he can be a vet. With Kaidoh. And Momo will be a sports doctor, and the two of them will forever butt heads about who’s the _real_ M.D.”

The image of Momo and Kaidoh with their fists clenched in each other’s lab coats (would Kaidoh still wear that bandana?) with identical glares transposed ten centimeters above the ground and ten years into the future makes Takashi choke on his hot tea. Fuji pats him on the back.

Today, Tezuka’s a lawyer for the public good, Kikumaru’s an amusement park entrepreneur, Inui’s a computer programmer, and Echizen’s a pro tennis player who makes No. 1 at an annoyingly young age (“like he’s doing here,” Fuji says, affectionate, and Takashi grins. 

They’re getting to the best part, the part Fuji always saves for last. “And what will you be doing?” Takashi asks.

“I don’t know. I’ll be a crime scene photographer first, to stock up some ideas for my horror movie career. Which I’ll start with my savings from crime photography,” Fuji decides. Takashi swallows, and nods. By now he’s familiar with Fuji’s photography (stunning) and his tolerance for horror (unnaturally high), almost equal to his taste for spices.

That leaves just Takashi. He wants it to come as much as he wants to draw it out, like the last drop of hot-sweet sake his parents slip him at New Year’s or a game he has felt in every inch of his body. He feels this way every time, and this time, he chooses to delay.

“Isn’t it weird that we found so many friends in one place,” Takashi says.

He feels comfortable saying that now, calling these people his friends, even his best friends. Now that they’ve been to his family’s shop and poked carelessly at his room upstairs and spent hours and days on the same courts, winning and losing and making up for each other’s losses. It’s only been a little while, and look where they are.

But Fuji tilts his head with the not-quite smile, that odd new face he made when Takashi quarrelled with him about the sushi. “You know, you’re the first real friend I made here.”

Takashi’s stunned. He knows he must be grinning stupidly, but — “You have so many friends, Fuji.”

“I guess I mean there are different sorts of friends. Yuuta used to be my best friend, I think. Eiji’s friends with Oishi first. And no one listens to me talk about this stuff, anyway.”

“But Tezuka --”

“Can you imagine trying to play make-believe with _Tezuka_?” Fuji snorts, coquettishly, and the moment is gone. Today, Takashi will be a sushi store owner who helps a bento service for the nursing home he volunteers at sometimes. “All the old ladies will be racing after you on their wheelchairs,” Fuji teases, and Takashi blushes, but he doesn’t glow inside in the same way he does when he thinks about that, about being Fuji’s one friend. 

Now he knows how Fuji felt. He knew Fuji was his friend, but it’s different when he gets to hear it like this — when Fuji had smiled at him and let their argument drop just like that, he might have felt a little like this, so tidally happy in a way he never could be, doing the things he loved most on his own. Not photography, sushi, even tennis. Nothing like that at all.

 *

Takashi’s a little shy around Fuji the next week. This is embarrassing, but not unexpected. When his own father told him he was starting to get better in the kitchen, he botched his slices for the rest of the evening from nerves. 

Fuji’s also weird around Takashi. This never happens. At practice he chooses Eiji to stretch with, displacing Oishi, who usurps Kaidoh’s place with Inui. Echizen seems to see it as an opportunity and sidles up to Takashi, leaving Momo and Kaidoh breathing heavily at each other in pungent rage. Echizen smirks. Takashi looks down at his feet in embarrassment, wishing it were easier, wishing he were as good with people as Fuji. He’s momentarily afraid that whatever they left that night understanding would wither in the time they take to get over this, whatever it is.

It gets worse when they play. Tezuka’s testing him and Fuji one-on-two, and Takashi plays badly, running more than judgement demands and jumping for smashes that leave strong but land short of the mark. But Fuji’s worse. He’s playing as though he’s bored, his returns limpid and his counters landing sloppy distances from the white line, leaving Tezuka easy scoops that he smacks back like a reprimand.

“Fuji, a word,” Tezuka rumbles when they’re done, 6-2, and even Echizen halts his serve to stare. Fuji follows without reply and the courts are very quiet for a minute. But Tezuka never says more than he has to, and Fuji must have managed him well enough, for they leave in enough time for just a couple sentences to be uttered, Tezuka leading and Fuji trailing with a version of his usual expression intact. They do color drills the rest of practice, everyone paired with whoever’s closest, and that leaves Fuji with Tezuka — who looks shocked when Fuji actually calls him “buchou” — and Takashi with Momo, his mind on everything but tennis.

By the end of practice, Takashi’s made up his mind. He knows what Fuji would do if he were the one acting oddly — almost sadly, he realises — and he thinks that if he doesn’t ask, no one might. That if Fuji doesn’t expect, or doesn’t want, even his oldest friends here to listen to him when he’s talking about himself, he won’t say anything. And that’s not right, when Fuji is the one who understands nearly everyone best of all.

He works up the courage to wait as Fuji makes lingering chit chat with Kikumaru, who glances around uncomfortably as though aware that something’s off, then takes a lingering shower. It’s as though Fuji knows, and is avoiding him. But Fuji can’t be angry with him, not when they talked like that just two nights ago, not when he seems upset with the world and smaller than himself. Takashi wants to be a friend.

He’s sitting on the locker room bench, half-thinking and half-dozing from the sheer exhaustion of the day when Fuji slips up to him instead. His hair is wet. When he bends to his knees before Takashi, the childish milk scent of his body soap rises sweetly like new bread.

“You’re hurt,” Fuji says, “here,” the tip of his finger smoothing over Takashi’s kneecap, and he hisses, the precise sear of a cigarette burn. He looks down. It’s just a smallish graze layered with a bruise; Fuji must have touched right where it cut deepest, for it to hurt so.

“Fuji,” he says almost wonderingly. This is not how he thought it would go. “Was something bothering you today?”

Fuji looks up at him, assessing. He’s wearing that face again, and Takashi knows it’s not a happy one, sad or scared or both. They breathe together for a moment, two.

Takashi’s stood next to Fuji and known they were working the match over in their minds, picking out the blind spots and bad play. It’s still new to him, this feeling. He’s never had to be so close to one single person, thinking and breathing both, in the same place twice over.

He has no idea what Fuji is thinking now.

Fuji moves. His fingers slip through Takashi’s, threading them seamlessly close. Takashi can feel Fuji’s skin everywhere on his hands, no place where they’re not touching.

“Fuji?” he says again. Then his mouth slackens as he stares down at Fuji in sudden understanding.

Crouched low on his haunches, Fuji is pale and gamine, hair fox-rich and covering his open eyes. Perhaps that’s Fuji’s way of hiding, Takashi thinks. Maybe he’s only so strong and good because no one really sees him at all. But these are nonsense thoughts, thoughts to distract him from the fact that Fuji is _that_ , and he feels _this_ about him, and what — Takashi isn’t —

Numbly, he hoists Fuji up with their hands still locked. In the moment they take to stand and steady themselves, Takashi thinks like Fuji, his mind making up images of them walking down Shinjuku with their hands like this, homework turned to dates at the sushi shop, perhaps Fuji’s breath hot on his mouth, the two of them going everywhere, closer than close, announcing to his parents that here was his person in the world… Takashi hasn’t even thought about kissing a girl.

He wants, and he doesn’t want.

He glances at Fuji but Fuji’s looking away, and in a rush he feels pity for Fuji, as he’s never felt or thought to feel for anyone in his life, not even himself. That Fuji should have everything he can possibly want, but he can’t take this.

“Let’s go home,” Takashi says. Their hands are still loosely held. They can go to the train station, at least. They can walk as far as that and figure things out.

But Fuji doesn’t follow.


End file.
